TWO weeks after the biggest nuclear crisis in a generation and a leading item on ABC radio news is that three workers have been taken to hospital in Japan for radiation treatment. Meanwhile, the toll from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (killed or missing) is more than 27,000.
You might say that setting the radiation statistics at the still-dangerous Fukushima nuclear station against the wider disaster toll in Japan is meaningless … the story is far from over.
But what would be meaningful? Let's pit the reported radiation casualties in Japan against other casualty lists in alternative forms of energy. For instance, the number killed in coal mines: in China alone, the official estimate of fatalities inside the national mining industry is more than 2000 a year.
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Yes, the future of nuclear energy is under immediate review but a number of indicators suggest that the review may turn in a surprising direction. The simplest indicator of what the market thinks will happen is uranium prices (that is ''spot'' prices, which represent about a fifth of all uranium traded).
In the days after the Fukushima crisis, the spot price fell 20 per cent, but it has since rebounded 13 per cent to settle back at about $US60 a pound, suggesting business as usual in the broader uranium market.
At the same time, uranium stocks have generally mirrored the underlying change in the uranium spot market.
Extract Resources, a mid-sized ''pure'' play, which fell from $10.50 to $6.50 in the days after the Fukushima explosions, on Friday had climbed back to $8.47.
Australia is a global centre of uranium production. At the moment it has only three mines producing a combined volume of about 8000 tonnes a year, but the official forecasts from government agency ABARES is that this output will roughly double within four years.
Much of this expanded production may come from Western Australia where BHP has substantial deposits. There has been political objection to uranium production in WA but last week the state Labor Party announced it would review its anti-nuclear stance, with a report due to be released in June.
Clearly there is a sense - tentative still - that nuclear power and the uranium industry is not going to be hit as hard as many thought even a fortnight ago.
There may be more stringent regulation (hopefully); there may be a change to the nuclear engineering process (a greater use of thorium, a metal promoted by some in science as cleaner and much more powerful). But already it seems clear that uranium as a feasible alternative to coal, gas and hydro power remains miles ahead of its wind, wave and solar rivals.
Moreover, this conclusion will be bolstered if more leading voices in the environmental movement respond to the Japanese tragedy in the same way as George Monbiot of London's Guardian newspaper.
Just as Adelaide-based geologist and climate sceptic Ian Plimer is public enemy No. 1 of environmentalists, Monbiot is the self-styled conscience of global environmentalism.
Yet, after watching the Japanese reactors survive an earthquake, this is what Monbiot is now saying: ''Yes I loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry … but there are no ideal solutions. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to nuclear power.''
The inconvenient truth here is that Japan's nuclear power stations have not so far devastated the nuclear energy sector nor the uranium mining sector that provides its raw material … and the chances they will are receding by the day.
This gives one a pretty good under standing of the
Life Cycle of a Nuclear Fuel Rod
A typical solid nuclear fuel rod includes a zirconium alloy tube or “cladding” encasing a single column of uranium fuel pellets. The cladding tube is smaller in diameter than your index finger, and is about 12 feet long.
The uranium pellets are each about the size of the tip or your pinky finger, with the energy equivalent of 17000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1780 pounds of coal or 3.5 barrels of oil.
The pellets are stacked in the tube with allowance for pellet expansion during fission and heating of the uranium. Once the uranium pellets are loaded into the cladding tube, zirconium end caps are welded in place to form a complete loaded fuel “rod.”
The cladding, pellets and even an individual virgin rod are not hazardous to handle alone, however, multiple loaded rods in close proximity will begin a spontaneous fission reaction. The rods are thus maintained in a non-critical, i.e., a non-fissioning, state during storage or transport by either substantial separation between rods or by control rods or other moderators suitable to absorb neutrons in a more compact rod arrangement.
The fuel rods are then arranged in “bundles” or “fuel rod assemblies”, e.g., 14×14 or 17×17 arrays, which are then inserted into the core with a number of control rods being retractable from the bundle to initiate fission and insertable into the bundle to stop fission. Many rod bundles are oriented vertically in the reactor core with a substantial flow of water passing upward through the bundles to convey the fission reaction heat to a steam turbine for generation of electricity.
The zirconium cladding serves to hermetically isolate the uranium pellets and accumulated fission byproducts from exposure to the water flow in the core or cooling tank or to the atmosphere.
The thin-walled cladding is transparent to radiation but is naturally affected by the high heat stresses and heat loading in the core. The rods are preemptively retired after a finite core cycle, 18 months to several years, to maintain cladding integrity even though only a small fraction of the uranium is “spent.” This finite core cycle is also limited by accumulation of fission byproducts, particularly nuetron absorbers, inside the fuel rod.
A retired or spent nuclear fuel (“SNF”) rod is placed in a water cooling tank for an initial cool-down period during which the more highly radioactive (shorter half-life) isotopes rapidly decay. During this period, the rapid decay still generates substantial decay radiation and heat, albeit only a small fraction of the fission radiation and heat that is generated during reactor operation. After this initial cool-down period, the slower decay of the remaining longer-half-life isotopes generates a moderate amount of decay radiation and heat, which is readily absorbed by a concrete “dry cask” during long-term storage.
A typical nuclear plant can have hundreds of active fuel rod bundles in each core, thousands of SNF rods in short-term cool-down tanks and fuel from tens of thousands of SNF rods in long-term dry cask storage. The cooling tanks at the compromised Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant collectively house around 11,000 SNF rods with a portion of those housed in the cooling tanks above reactors 1-4.
Water in the cool-down tanks acts as a neutron moderator, radiation shield and coolant, so long as the water level around the rods in the tank is maintained. If the SNF rods are left exposed and uncooled long enough, rapid oxidation (often called “burning”) and extreme heat stress can eventually compromise the cladding, expose the uranium, generate hydrogen, and release fission byproducts. Unmoderated and uncooled SNF rods can produce sufficient radiation and heat that even brief close proximity worker exposure is unacceptable. Should the cooling tank levels drop too low for too long, it could be challenging to restore the cooling tank water levels from a safe distance.
Hopefully, the cooling tank water levels at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will be restored and the situation stabilized soon.
Those conditions could add even more complexity, and potentially costs, to bilateral nuclear safeguards agreements focused previously on the spread of nuclear weapons.
"Australians will note also that the Fukushima disaster is prompting India to review its own nuclear safety. Following the crisis in Japan, and in the glare of the Indian media, the intended expansion of India's nuclear footprint may well slow or even stall," Medcalf said.
Australia has 22 bilateral nuclear safeguard agreements, which allow exports to 39 countries.
In recent years, Canberra has signed agreements with Russiaand China, and has already sent its first shipments of uranium into China, where uranium consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent to 18,000 tonnes by 2016.
At a uranium conference in South Australia state, Australian Uranium Association chief executive Michael Angwin said the economic factors driving countries to nuclear power use were unchanged by the Japan emergency.
"Countries turn to nuclear energy because they wish to improve their energy security and expand their electricity generating capacity in a way that does not increase their carbon emissions. That remains the case," Angwin said.
Australia's uranium exports in the year to July 1, 2011 are forecast at 8,700 tonnes, up 21 percent on the previous year, with production set to expand an average 15 percent per year to July 2016 as several new mines set to start production.
The chief executive of one of Australia's biggest uranium miners, Paladin, has slammed the media and share traders for their treatment of nuclear focused businesses in the wake of the Japanese earthquake.
Paladin's chief executive John Borshoff says Uranium focused businesses have become a sideshow to the Japanese crisis.
"Which, though understandable as this is the nature of nuclear, is nevertheless having a highly destructive impact," he said.
"The media frenzy, the stakeholder positioning feeding on misinformation and hyperbole is astounding."
Despite this, the company insists the outlook is still positive for atomic energy suppliers.
The company says there are 440 active nuclear reactors in the world, and another 62 are already under construction.
Mr Borshoff says renewable energy is out of the question to supply enough energy, and gas will not be able to fill the hole left by coal, making nuclear power essential.
"When this all settles down, the big thing that will have to be confronted by Japan and all other economies is how to continue producing enough electricity which is the foundation of economic well being," he said.
"The energy strategists of Japan many years ago made the decision that nuclear is essential, and will remain so."
Mr Borshoff has also defended the safety of nuclear power and, in particular, the plant at Fukushima.
"It has withstood forces way beyond its design specification," he said.
LANHAM, Md. — Promising "this is only the beginning," President Barack Obama announced more than $8 billion in federal loan guarantees Tuesday for the construction of the first nuclear power plant in the United States in nearly three decades.
Obama cast his move as both economically essential and politically attractive as he sought to put more charge into his broad energy agenda. Obama called for comprehensive energy legislation that assigns a cost to the carbon pollution of fossil fuels, giving utility companies more incentive to turn to cleaner nuclear fuel.
Berkeley nuclear engineers say the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is now shut down, is about 40 years old.
The 8.9 earthquake caused the reactor to leak radiation in a way that they say they could not have anticipated and caused evacuations of 50,000 people, within six miles of the plant. Japanese engineers are now concerned about cooling the reactor and avoiding more leaks.
"The reactor is guarded by multiple barriers, so this time apparently some of the barriers were broken, but we still have barriers in the system," said Ahn.
He says that's the reason the radioactivity has so far been confined to the control room and not the atmosphere. At this point, Japanese engineers are trying to safely cool the reactor down by first releasing steam which contains some low levels of radioactivity and then slowly pouring coolant into the system.
"They have to do it within a few days at most. So within, maybe over this weekend well see some major results," said Ahn.
Berkeley nuclear engineers say the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is now shut down, is about 40 years old.
The 8.9 earthquake caused the reactor to leak radiation in a way that they say they could not have anticipated and caused evacuations of 50,000 people, within six miles of the plant. Japanese engineers are now concerned about cooling the reactor and avoiding more leaks.
"The reactor is guarded by multiple barriers, so this time apparently some of the barriers were broken, but we still have barriers in the system," said Ahn.
He says that's the reason the radioactivity has so far been confined to the control room and not the atmosphere. At this point, Japanese engineers are trying to safely cool the reactor down by first releasing steam which contains some low levels of radioactivity and then slowly pouring coolant into the system.
"They have to do it within a few days at most. So within, maybe over this weekend well see some major results," said Ahn.
THE Australian president of uranium company Heathgate has resigned, casting further doubts over the company's mining projects at Beverley in the state's north.
David Williams, who took the helm of Heathgate early last year, is leaving the position to become managing director of another company.
The resignation is the latest in a string of disruptions for Heathgate which is tied up in legal disputes involving its exploration arm, Quasar Resources.
Quasar and Alliance Resources are joint venture partners in the Four Mile uranium project, but are mired in a legal dispute that is delaying the mine's development.
Heathgate has endured several changes in senior managment in recent years, and Mr Williams's departure follows on the heels of Patrick Mutz's departure from Alliance late last year.
Heathgate is owned by US parent company General Atomics.
SA Chamber of Mines and Energy chief executive Jason Kuchel said he hoped to see the parties resolve their disagreement.
"I would expect that ultimately it will happen because I can't imagine that either party wants to sit on a significant resource and not develop it," he said. "Certainly we would like to see the issues resolved to enable the project to move ahead."
Heathgate has appointed Joel Lister acting president.
Mr Williams will remain with Heathgate as a non-executive director.
Australia would impose strict conditions on any uranium exports to India if the ruling Labor Party dropped its ban on sales to the country, Australian Resources Minister Martin Ferguson told Reuters on Wednesday March 9.
Ferguson is leading a push for the Labor Party to change its policy, which currently bans uranium exports to countries which have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to allow sales to energy hungry India.
Australia also negotiates bilateral nuclear safeguards agreements with uranium buyers, which ensure Australian material cannot be used for nuclear weapons.
"If we were to go down the track of opening up sales of uranium to India, there would be even tougher process of negotiations," Ferguson said in an interview. "Country by country, it is a separate diplomatic process."
India has long complained about Australia's uranium policy as it seeks access to nuclear supplies for its booming electricity sector and growing economy. Australia expects India to build five new nuclear reactors by 2016.
Australia has almost 40 percent of the world's known uranium reserves, but supplies only 19 percent of the world market from three current mines, BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam, the world's biggest uranium mine, Energy Resources Australia's Ranger mine in the Northern Territory, and the Beverly mine, owned by U.S. company General Atomics.
Exports in the year to July 1, 2011 are forecast at 8,700 tonnes, up 21 percent on the previous year, with mine production set expand an average 15 percent per year to July 2016 as several new mines set to start production.
Australia has 22 bilateral nuclear safeguard agreements, which allow exports to 39 countries.
In recent years, Australia has signed agreements with Russia and China, and Australia has already sent its first shipments of uranium to China, where uranium consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent to 18,000 tonnes by 2016.
Ferguson said India's agreement with the United States and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, to open inspections of its civilian nuclear facilities, proved India was not a rogue nuclear nation.
The minister will push for the Labor Party to change its policy at the party's national conference, due in the second half of 2011. He said the debate would be hard fought, just like the party's 2007 decision to overturn its ban on new uranium mines.
"These are highly sensitive sacred cows," Ferguson said. "Nothing comes easy in terms of tough policy decisions. This is a delicate and tough debate within the party."
Earlier on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said Australia would begin negotiating a nuclear safeguards agreement with the United Arab Emirates for potential sales of uranium.
Australian Uranium News - Research
